THE next play to go on stage at Malvern’s Festival Theatre is likely to produce a calamitous evening!

But theatregoers shouldn’t worry, as it really is planned to go wrong.

The Play That Goes Wrong arrives for a week long run at the Festival on Tuesday, April 22, and it’s a comedy which exploded onto the stage with phenomenal success last year.

Opening at the Old Red Lion in London to unanimous rave reviews, the show then transferred to the West End where it enjoyed two successive runs at the Trafalgar Studios. This was followed by a sell-out season at the Edinburgh Festival and now it is embarking on its UK tour.

Triple Olivier award-winning Top Hat producer Kenny Wax, who is co-producing the UK tour, says: “A few months ago a producer friend asked me to accompany him to see The Play That Goes Wrong at the Trafalgar Studios.

“I was totally charmed, we offered them a deal on the spot. I should add that I have never been quite so impulsive before, but I had a real desire to help this bunch of daredevil and totally committed young actors to bring their show to a wider audience.

“There’s something very satisfying about hearing an audience laugh, cheer and to then watch them leave the theatre with an enormous sense of elation. I have no doubt that this production will do the same.”

Co-written by Mischief Theatre company members Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer and Henry Shields and directed by Mark Bell, The Play That Goes Wrong is a highly physical comedy packed with finely-tuned farce and Buster Keaton inspired slapstick delivered with split-second timing and ambitious daring.

The play introduces The Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society who are attempting to put on a 1920s’ murder mystery, but as the title suggests, everything that can go wrong… does, as the accident prone thesps battle on against all the odds to get to their final curtain call.

Mischief Theatre was founded in 2008 by a group of graduates of The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) and began as an improvised comedy group.

Recent winners of the Edinburgh Festival’s ‘Spirit of The Fringe’ Award, Mischief Theatre performs across the UK and internationally with improvised and original scripted work.

The recent success of The Play That Goes Wrong has put them firmly in the spotlight, attracting international attention from theatre producers worldwide.